An Australian Artist and her Poodle Muse

Project RE:MAKE

A few months ago I was asked to take part in this years Project RE:MAKE exhibition. The mission of RE:MAKE is to rescue abandoned art projects and give them a new life. So last week I had some time to work on the art piece that I was assigned to “re make”. The artwork was an abandoned 8′ x 10′ oil painting by an anonymous and probably disheartened artist (as it was found in a garage sale). My first reaction to receiving this piece was utter stage fright and complete creative block, as I had no idea how I could transform it into anything worthy of exhibiting. I am such a control freak and the thought of re-working an already completed painting was not easy for me. It took me a few days of thinking out preliminary ideas, but in the end I was happy with the result. Thank goodness! Here is my RE:MAKE artwork progress, followed by the final and finished painting…

This is what the painting looked like when it came into my possession. I loved the blue and orange colour scheme, so I used this as inspiration, I then turned the painting upside down…..

In the image above you can see that the painting has flipped vertically, for some reason I thought the colours worked better this way. I then painted over the artwork an ivory vintage floral pattern, leaving the original painting showing through in the background.

The image of the little girl that I’ve painted, is from an old photo I took a few years ago. So it was serendipity that it was perfect for this enchanted forest scene that I wanted to create.

I had intended to paint the little girl in colour, but along the way I decide to leave her in a desaturated hue, she just seemed more in balance with the whole image like this. I did though give her jacket some colour to balance out the composition. I then went and put a grey/brown glaze over the original areas of the painting showing through the new layers of paint. This helped define the new painting against the original painting underneath. I then brightened up the entire canvas with coloured glazes, which really brightened up the finished painting pictured below….

Et voila! Here it is, the final painting finished. Well, I did surprise myself and managed to completely change the original painting into something totally new. This was so much fun and for a while there, I imagined myself on Project Runway doing an episode of “The Uncoventional Materials Challenge!”. If only Tim Gunn was there to guide me along, but alas I had my beloved Wolfgang here with me instead, whom I must say is just as suave and looks better in a bow tie than Mr Gunn himself!

This painting will be on show along with 12 other rescued artworks by both established and emerging Sydney artists at at the RE:MAKE Exhibition in East Sydney from the 29 – 30 March, 2014. Each artwork will be auctioned to raise funds for East Sydney’s Public High School Art Programme. For more information click on the link here